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.'. CIETY STATE HI.-. B- ICV-HI'iT
& L'. V. HY .-.-
' i
7Ut Year . 177 -- oimI Marnhip! It's Smuhiy. iftril it. I7) Station - 4 ln 35 Cent Report says NRC knew of plant flaws
DETROIT ( UPI) The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission knew of serious safety flaws at the
Three Mile Island nuclear plant before last
month's crippling accident but failed to take
corrective action because of staff infighting, a
newspaper report says.
The Detroit News, in a copyrighted article
from its Washington bureau, said an ideological
split between opponents and advocates of
nuclear power on the commission staff has
" semiparalyzed" the agency and may be at
least partly to blame for the accident that
crippled the Pennsylvania plant.
The newspaper said it conducted separate
interviews last week with six commission of-ficials
who complained that the staff has
become so " politicized" in the past year and a
half that it is incapable of responding with speed
to the type of problems that turned up at the
Three Mile Island plant.
The report said commission members met
Related stories Page 3A
several times in the past three months to discuss
reports of cooling- equipme- nt failures and
inadequate staff training at the plant, but could
not agree on what action to take.
All six of the staff members interviewed by
the News said the ideological division has
considerably slowed inspection and licensing
processes, sometimes leaving the agency
unable to respond quickly to safety deficiencies.
One source told the newspaper the disputes
have " left the agency semiparalzyed in dealing
with reports of safety flaws at the Three Mile
Island plant, as well as several other new plants
that were having some start- u- p problems that
normally should have been corrected quickly."
The News said the six officials, ranging from
middle- - to high- lev- el management, asked to
remain unidentified to prevent further
escalation of hostilities within the agency.
An official response from the commission was
not immediately available.
The six officials told the newspaper that
nuclear inspectors and utility executives
reported 12 separate coohng- quipme- nt failures
at Three Mile Island in the past year, including
two malfunctions as recently as Feb. 6.
In addition, the News said, the commission
received several reports of discrepancies in the
coding of computerized equipment used to
monitor conditions inside the nuclear core at
Three Mile Island reactor No. 2. None of those
conditions had been corrected or even
thoroughly investigated, the officials said.
The News quoted one senior official as saying
the agency had several reports of " glaring
gaps" in training for technicians who operate
the Three Mile Island plant, but that agency
staff members had dismissed the reports as
" inconsequential."
In Washington earlier, an NRC spokesman
said Metropolitan Edison Co., which operated
the plant, could lose its license if an in-vestigation
found the company seriously at
fault. Two valves that were improperly closed
allowed the accident to reach the crisis stage.
Gov. Dick Thomburgh of Pennsylvania said
the accident " has raised my level of skep-ticism"
about nuclear power, and he reiterated
Saturday that he hadsenous doubts about the
reopening of the plant once it is decontaminated
and repaired.
That process, said Dr. Robert Bernaro an
NRC decontamination expert, could take
several years.
Insight
Learning,
calculators
harmonious
By Uda Gannon
Missourian staff writer
In a science fiction story by Isaac
Asimov, the president, the
congressmen and the lowly technicians
of the Terrestrial Federation a
computer- depende- nt government all
need a calculator to multiply nine times
seven.
Then, in Asimov's story, a high- ranki- ng
computer programmer
discovers that one of his lowly
technicians can add, subtract, multiply
and divide without using a calculator.
Eureka! All credit the technician with
inventing the science of computation.
They are unaware that computation
existed once and had merely been
forgotten.
Nearly 20 years after Asimov wrote
this story, Robert E. Rtys, a University
professor in math education, wondered
what would rtsppen to children orho use
calculators over an extended period of
time. Would frequent use of the
machines in school decrease the
children's ability to compute without a
calculator? With a grant from the
National Science Foundation ( NSF ) , he
purchased 180 calculators and began a
study at Columbia's Fairview
Elementary School.
Now, with the study completed, Reys
thinks he has at least part of the answer
to his questions. He says his results
indicate that calculators can be used as
part of the elementary mathematics
curriculum without children becoming
too dependent on tliem and forgetting
their basic facts answer to problems
like nine times seven or five plus six,
for example.
For Reys, the issue is no longer
should the calculators be used, but
rather, how can they best be used. " I
think it's one of the hottest items right
now facing the mathematics
curriculum what do we do with hand
calculators," Reys said.
Meanwhile, Reys is still writing the
final report on his study. Research
began in the fall of 1977 when Reys and
four other Midwest university
professors ( from Ohio State, Purdue
University and the University of Iowa)
agreed to research the effect of
calculator use in elementary school
mathematics. The first task for each
( See MATH, Page 12A)
Fiddler it the hill JasxeiB
Annie Ohman decided the weather Saturday afternoon was too nice Ms. Ohman, 211 Ripley St., is a member of the bluegrass band to stay inside, so she went to Stephens Park to practice her fiddle. Brush Creek, which will be performing locally next week.
Crop Walk
will benefit
Haitians
By Mike De Mott
Missourian staff writer
A 10- mi- le ( 1. 6- kilo-meter
walk
through Columbia on Saturday. April
21, will provide money to combat
hunger both here and in Haiti.
The Columbia Crop Walk Against
Hunger is being organized and spon-sored
by a broad base of local
organizations and individuals, the Rev.
Max Marble of Missouri United
Methodist Church, said.
Eighty percent of the hike's proceeds
will be used to buy a desperately
needed tractor for the people on an
island in Haiti, with the remainder
going to Columbia's Meals on Wheels
Programs and the Columbia Koinonia
House, Marble said.
Marble and other Crop Walk com-mittee
members hope to generate about
$ 10,000 and involve over 500 persons in
the event.
The walk will begin at 9 a. m. in the
MFA Gardens and is routed to loop
around and through the city, ending at
the starting point
" Haiti is the most impoverished
country in this hemisphere and so far a
wide range of individuals and groups in
Columbia have expressed concern for
the problem of hunger both here in
Columbia and in Haiti," Marty
Heesacker. walk coordinator and social
concerns director of the University's
Newman Center, said.
Co- sponso- rs for the walk include the
Interfaith Council, KTGR Radio and
the Columbia Missourian. Persons
interested in further information can
contact the Newman Center's staff. Uehling divides Equal Opportunity Council
By Lola Butcher
Missourian staff writer
As part of her efforts to promote a
" spirit of commitment to equal op-portunity,"
Chancellor Barbara
Uehling outlined plans last October to
appoint a director of equal opportunity,
establish a task force on minorities and
merge existing affirmative- actio- n
committees into an Equal Opportunity
Council.
Now, six months later, candidates for
the director's position are being
screened, and the task force has long
since handed in its report.
But the Equal Opportunity Council is
being abolished.
In its place, the chancellor will re-establish
separate committees on the
problems of women and minorities. The
existing committee for the physically
handicapped, which once was planned
to be included in the Equal Opportunity
Council, will continue.
These committees, however, now will
report to yet another committee, made
up of their three chairpersons, with
possibly another person. The super- committe- e,
or " advisory council," will
work u-.- tft the yet- to- b- e appointed
director of equal opportunity.
The attempted reorganization failed
because neither of the committees that
made up the Equal Opportunity Council
had a firm grasp on its own role, says
Shaila Aery, special assistant to Dr.
Uehling. Lacking that, the merged body
foundered.
Each faction needed its own well- defin- ed
goals, and the goals simply did
not exist, she says. Ms. Aery stresses
that the failure of the council was not
the fault of the individual members, but
rather that she and the chancellor had
assumed its constituent groups to
already be going strong.
Others argue that the merger was
doomed in any case. Mutual concerns
for equity are not a strong enough basis
for joining forces of pressure groups,
they say.
" When you put two pressure groups
together, they spend more time
bickering among themselves than
working toward common goals," says
David West, finance professor and
Faculty Council chairman. West was
one of the first to call for reorganization
of the council.
The chancellor's goals for the Equal
Opportunity Council seem clear: to
provide continual review of its con-stituent
groups, make recom-mendations
to her office and to the
director of equal opportunity, and
sponsor special events and ob-servances.
But the council had trouble
defining its goals and spent much of its
existence trying to get organized.
Gene Robertson, co- chairm- an of the
council and professor of community
and regional affairs, suggests that
those goals were too comprehensive for
any one committee to handle.
Eighthrgraders are taxed
by 1979 revenue forms
By Sbefla Davis
Missourian staff writer
The Internal Revenue Service sim-plified
tax fonns m 1977, but decided too
many taxpayers were still stumbling
through their tax figuring, and revised
the forms again this year.
They hope people reading at the
eighth- grad- e level will understand
tbem.
That does not mean, however, that
eighth- grad- e pupils can master the
forms, as pupils at Oakland Junior High
found out last week.
Forty- tw- o pupils in Margaret Brock's
third- ho- ur and Judy Morris's fourth- hou- r
renglih classes at Oakland Junior
High School tangled with the tax ter-minology
in an experiment to see how
much trouble they would have with the
new instructions.
They found that, although they could
understand much of the forms, the
ideas involved were beyond their ex-perience.
Most of the confusion arose from the
wording of the forms.
For instance, one pupils was confused
by the phrase " file joint return." He
couldn't figure out what a " file joint"
W& Sa
Another wrote that he didnt know
whether he was a " dependent" or an
" exemption."
The readability test involved sup-plying
words taken out of a section of
the tax instruction booklet. Mrs.
Morris's class studied an opening
section titled " Were You an Unmarried
Head of Household?" Mrs. Brock's
class tackled another on deductions
called " Disability Pension and Annuity
Payments."
The results showed what IRS
spokesmen said could be expected: the
general instruction sections are easier
to read than some sections on specific
deductions.
While over half of the class reading
the easier section scored at the eighth- grad- e
level, only three of 24 pupils
studying the more difficult one scored
that well.
Rosaland Malveaux, 313 Mohawk
Ave., spoke for the majority of the
Oakland pupils when she shook her
head, popped her gum and said, " This
doesn't make sense. No sense at all."
Rosaland said after the test that when
the time comes for her to pay income
tax, shell do what her older brother
and her parents do give the forms to
( See PUPILS, Page 14A
Inside
ciy
No color comics
The color comics which usually
accompany the Sunday Missourian
fell victim to the Teamster's trucking
strike this week and consequently do
not appear today. Encyclopedia
Brown and Star Wars are, however, in
their usual spot on Page 5C.
Toys and Tots
Dolls without arms . or legs and
trucks without wheels spell an urgent
need for toys by the University's
Speech and Hearing Clinic. 117
Parker Hall. To meet the need, the
University chapter of the National
Student Speech and Hearing
Association is sponsoring a city- wid- e
toy drive. Read about it on Page 7A.
No. 2 man
Mel George will tell you he is
swamped with work. His associates
probably would say that the power he
wields in the University system
matches the workload. Read about
University Hall's No. 2 man on
Background, Page SB.
Shi flRSI flSiEB Vkkik
A question and answer session with author Studs Terkel appears
in today's Vibrations.
z I lis town
Noon to midnight Mizzou Days
Carnival at the Hearnes Center east
parking lot. A University student- sponsor- ed
carnival featuring game
booths, rides and food concessions.
2 p. m." You're a Good Man, Charlie
Brown," Stephens College Warehouse
Theater, Adults $ 1.50, students $ 1.25,
children 12 and under 75 cents.
3 p. m. The St Louis Symphony
Orchestra and the University Choral
Union perform Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony in Jesse Auditorium.
Students, $ 1.50, general admission, $ 3.
7 p. m. " Sylvia Scarlett," film
starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary
Grant, assembly room, Columbia
Public Library, 100 W. Broadway.
Free.
Hfmsiy
7 p-- m. " China: Mid Treasures and
Palaces," slides and discussion, 7
p. m. Monday, free, second floor
meeting room, Cohsnbis Public
Library, 100 W. Broadway. Free.
7: 33 pja. " Migration Mysteries,"
Audubon wildlife series, Windsor
Auditorium, Stffphcng CoOsge. Ad
mission $ 1.58, students $ 1.

.'. CIETY STATE HI.-. B- ICV-HI'iT
& L'. V. HY .-.-
' i
7Ut Year . 177 -- oimI Marnhip! It's Smuhiy. iftril it. I7) Station - 4 ln 35 Cent Report says NRC knew of plant flaws
DETROIT ( UPI) The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission knew of serious safety flaws at the
Three Mile Island nuclear plant before last
month's crippling accident but failed to take
corrective action because of staff infighting, a
newspaper report says.
The Detroit News, in a copyrighted article
from its Washington bureau, said an ideological
split between opponents and advocates of
nuclear power on the commission staff has
" semiparalyzed" the agency and may be at
least partly to blame for the accident that
crippled the Pennsylvania plant.
The newspaper said it conducted separate
interviews last week with six commission of-ficials
who complained that the staff has
become so " politicized" in the past year and a
half that it is incapable of responding with speed
to the type of problems that turned up at the
Three Mile Island plant.
The report said commission members met
Related stories Page 3A
several times in the past three months to discuss
reports of cooling- equipme- nt failures and
inadequate staff training at the plant, but could
not agree on what action to take.
All six of the staff members interviewed by
the News said the ideological division has
considerably slowed inspection and licensing
processes, sometimes leaving the agency
unable to respond quickly to safety deficiencies.
One source told the newspaper the disputes
have " left the agency semiparalzyed in dealing
with reports of safety flaws at the Three Mile
Island plant, as well as several other new plants
that were having some start- u- p problems that
normally should have been corrected quickly."
The News said the six officials, ranging from
middle- - to high- lev- el management, asked to
remain unidentified to prevent further
escalation of hostilities within the agency.
An official response from the commission was
not immediately available.
The six officials told the newspaper that
nuclear inspectors and utility executives
reported 12 separate coohng- quipme- nt failures
at Three Mile Island in the past year, including
two malfunctions as recently as Feb. 6.
In addition, the News said, the commission
received several reports of discrepancies in the
coding of computerized equipment used to
monitor conditions inside the nuclear core at
Three Mile Island reactor No. 2. None of those
conditions had been corrected or even
thoroughly investigated, the officials said.
The News quoted one senior official as saying
the agency had several reports of " glaring
gaps" in training for technicians who operate
the Three Mile Island plant, but that agency
staff members had dismissed the reports as
" inconsequential."
In Washington earlier, an NRC spokesman
said Metropolitan Edison Co., which operated
the plant, could lose its license if an in-vestigation
found the company seriously at
fault. Two valves that were improperly closed
allowed the accident to reach the crisis stage.
Gov. Dick Thomburgh of Pennsylvania said
the accident " has raised my level of skep-ticism"
about nuclear power, and he reiterated
Saturday that he hadsenous doubts about the
reopening of the plant once it is decontaminated
and repaired.
That process, said Dr. Robert Bernaro an
NRC decontamination expert, could take
several years.
Insight
Learning,
calculators
harmonious
By Uda Gannon
Missourian staff writer
In a science fiction story by Isaac
Asimov, the president, the
congressmen and the lowly technicians
of the Terrestrial Federation a
computer- depende- nt government all
need a calculator to multiply nine times
seven.
Then, in Asimov's story, a high- ranki- ng
computer programmer
discovers that one of his lowly
technicians can add, subtract, multiply
and divide without using a calculator.
Eureka! All credit the technician with
inventing the science of computation.
They are unaware that computation
existed once and had merely been
forgotten.
Nearly 20 years after Asimov wrote
this story, Robert E. Rtys, a University
professor in math education, wondered
what would rtsppen to children orho use
calculators over an extended period of
time. Would frequent use of the
machines in school decrease the
children's ability to compute without a
calculator? With a grant from the
National Science Foundation ( NSF ) , he
purchased 180 calculators and began a
study at Columbia's Fairview
Elementary School.
Now, with the study completed, Reys
thinks he has at least part of the answer
to his questions. He says his results
indicate that calculators can be used as
part of the elementary mathematics
curriculum without children becoming
too dependent on tliem and forgetting
their basic facts answer to problems
like nine times seven or five plus six,
for example.
For Reys, the issue is no longer
should the calculators be used, but
rather, how can they best be used. " I
think it's one of the hottest items right
now facing the mathematics
curriculum what do we do with hand
calculators," Reys said.
Meanwhile, Reys is still writing the
final report on his study. Research
began in the fall of 1977 when Reys and
four other Midwest university
professors ( from Ohio State, Purdue
University and the University of Iowa)
agreed to research the effect of
calculator use in elementary school
mathematics. The first task for each
( See MATH, Page 12A)
Fiddler it the hill JasxeiB
Annie Ohman decided the weather Saturday afternoon was too nice Ms. Ohman, 211 Ripley St., is a member of the bluegrass band to stay inside, so she went to Stephens Park to practice her fiddle. Brush Creek, which will be performing locally next week.
Crop Walk
will benefit
Haitians
By Mike De Mott
Missourian staff writer
A 10- mi- le ( 1. 6- kilo-meter
walk
through Columbia on Saturday. April
21, will provide money to combat
hunger both here and in Haiti.
The Columbia Crop Walk Against
Hunger is being organized and spon-sored
by a broad base of local
organizations and individuals, the Rev.
Max Marble of Missouri United
Methodist Church, said.
Eighty percent of the hike's proceeds
will be used to buy a desperately
needed tractor for the people on an
island in Haiti, with the remainder
going to Columbia's Meals on Wheels
Programs and the Columbia Koinonia
House, Marble said.
Marble and other Crop Walk com-mittee
members hope to generate about
$ 10,000 and involve over 500 persons in
the event.
The walk will begin at 9 a. m. in the
MFA Gardens and is routed to loop
around and through the city, ending at
the starting point
" Haiti is the most impoverished
country in this hemisphere and so far a
wide range of individuals and groups in
Columbia have expressed concern for
the problem of hunger both here in
Columbia and in Haiti," Marty
Heesacker. walk coordinator and social
concerns director of the University's
Newman Center, said.
Co- sponso- rs for the walk include the
Interfaith Council, KTGR Radio and
the Columbia Missourian. Persons
interested in further information can
contact the Newman Center's staff. Uehling divides Equal Opportunity Council
By Lola Butcher
Missourian staff writer
As part of her efforts to promote a
" spirit of commitment to equal op-portunity,"
Chancellor Barbara
Uehling outlined plans last October to
appoint a director of equal opportunity,
establish a task force on minorities and
merge existing affirmative- actio- n
committees into an Equal Opportunity
Council.
Now, six months later, candidates for
the director's position are being
screened, and the task force has long
since handed in its report.
But the Equal Opportunity Council is
being abolished.
In its place, the chancellor will re-establish
separate committees on the
problems of women and minorities. The
existing committee for the physically
handicapped, which once was planned
to be included in the Equal Opportunity
Council, will continue.
These committees, however, now will
report to yet another committee, made
up of their three chairpersons, with
possibly another person. The super- committe- e,
or " advisory council," will
work u-.- tft the yet- to- b- e appointed
director of equal opportunity.
The attempted reorganization failed
because neither of the committees that
made up the Equal Opportunity Council
had a firm grasp on its own role, says
Shaila Aery, special assistant to Dr.
Uehling. Lacking that, the merged body
foundered.
Each faction needed its own well- defin- ed
goals, and the goals simply did
not exist, she says. Ms. Aery stresses
that the failure of the council was not
the fault of the individual members, but
rather that she and the chancellor had
assumed its constituent groups to
already be going strong.
Others argue that the merger was
doomed in any case. Mutual concerns
for equity are not a strong enough basis
for joining forces of pressure groups,
they say.
" When you put two pressure groups
together, they spend more time
bickering among themselves than
working toward common goals," says
David West, finance professor and
Faculty Council chairman. West was
one of the first to call for reorganization
of the council.
The chancellor's goals for the Equal
Opportunity Council seem clear: to
provide continual review of its con-stituent
groups, make recom-mendations
to her office and to the
director of equal opportunity, and
sponsor special events and ob-servances.
But the council had trouble
defining its goals and spent much of its
existence trying to get organized.
Gene Robertson, co- chairm- an of the
council and professor of community
and regional affairs, suggests that
those goals were too comprehensive for
any one committee to handle.
Eighthrgraders are taxed
by 1979 revenue forms
By Sbefla Davis
Missourian staff writer
The Internal Revenue Service sim-plified
tax fonns m 1977, but decided too
many taxpayers were still stumbling
through their tax figuring, and revised
the forms again this year.
They hope people reading at the
eighth- grad- e level will understand
tbem.
That does not mean, however, that
eighth- grad- e pupils can master the
forms, as pupils at Oakland Junior High
found out last week.
Forty- tw- o pupils in Margaret Brock's
third- ho- ur and Judy Morris's fourth- hou- r
renglih classes at Oakland Junior
High School tangled with the tax ter-minology
in an experiment to see how
much trouble they would have with the
new instructions.
They found that, although they could
understand much of the forms, the
ideas involved were beyond their ex-perience.
Most of the confusion arose from the
wording of the forms.
For instance, one pupils was confused
by the phrase " file joint return." He
couldn't figure out what a " file joint"
W& Sa
Another wrote that he didnt know
whether he was a " dependent" or an
" exemption."
The readability test involved sup-plying
words taken out of a section of
the tax instruction booklet. Mrs.
Morris's class studied an opening
section titled " Were You an Unmarried
Head of Household?" Mrs. Brock's
class tackled another on deductions
called " Disability Pension and Annuity
Payments."
The results showed what IRS
spokesmen said could be expected: the
general instruction sections are easier
to read than some sections on specific
deductions.
While over half of the class reading
the easier section scored at the eighth- grad- e
level, only three of 24 pupils
studying the more difficult one scored
that well.
Rosaland Malveaux, 313 Mohawk
Ave., spoke for the majority of the
Oakland pupils when she shook her
head, popped her gum and said, " This
doesn't make sense. No sense at all."
Rosaland said after the test that when
the time comes for her to pay income
tax, shell do what her older brother
and her parents do give the forms to
( See PUPILS, Page 14A
Inside
ciy
No color comics
The color comics which usually
accompany the Sunday Missourian
fell victim to the Teamster's trucking
strike this week and consequently do
not appear today. Encyclopedia
Brown and Star Wars are, however, in
their usual spot on Page 5C.
Toys and Tots
Dolls without arms . or legs and
trucks without wheels spell an urgent
need for toys by the University's
Speech and Hearing Clinic. 117
Parker Hall. To meet the need, the
University chapter of the National
Student Speech and Hearing
Association is sponsoring a city- wid- e
toy drive. Read about it on Page 7A.
No. 2 man
Mel George will tell you he is
swamped with work. His associates
probably would say that the power he
wields in the University system
matches the workload. Read about
University Hall's No. 2 man on
Background, Page SB.
Shi flRSI flSiEB Vkkik
A question and answer session with author Studs Terkel appears
in today's Vibrations.
z I lis town
Noon to midnight Mizzou Days
Carnival at the Hearnes Center east
parking lot. A University student- sponsor- ed
carnival featuring game
booths, rides and food concessions.
2 p. m." You're a Good Man, Charlie
Brown," Stephens College Warehouse
Theater, Adults $ 1.50, students $ 1.25,
children 12 and under 75 cents.
3 p. m. The St Louis Symphony
Orchestra and the University Choral
Union perform Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony in Jesse Auditorium.
Students, $ 1.50, general admission, $ 3.
7 p. m. " Sylvia Scarlett," film
starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary
Grant, assembly room, Columbia
Public Library, 100 W. Broadway.
Free.
Hfmsiy
7 p-- m. " China: Mid Treasures and
Palaces," slides and discussion, 7
p. m. Monday, free, second floor
meeting room, Cohsnbis Public
Library, 100 W. Broadway. Free.
7: 33 pja. " Migration Mysteries,"
Audubon wildlife series, Windsor
Auditorium, Stffphcng CoOsge. Ad
mission $ 1.58, students $ 1.